SUSTAINABILITY IMPACT REPORT 2025–2026
Driven by our Mission, environmental sustainability remains a foundational pillar of our curriculum. We are excited
to spotlight these impactful initiatives funded through the generosity of the UWCSEA community for the 2025/2026
academic year. Our heartfelt thanks go to everyone who invested in empowering our students with the tools, character,
and drive to shape a more sustainable world.
It’s really hard for me to tell you what I like
best about Forest School because I like it
all. I guess my favourite thing was making
the food. I liked it when we made the blue
pea lemonade and then we got to make
and eat the sorghum popcorn. I think
it’s cool that those things came from our
Forest School garden and then we could
eat them! I also liked the tadpoles and the
den building.”
— Innes, Grade 2
If we want children to flourish, to become truly empowered, let us allow them to love the earth before
we ask them to save it.”
— David Soebel, Environmentalist
SUSTAINABILITY AT DOVER
Forest School Initiative
The Forest School programme was launched during the
2024/2025 academic year. The programme is designed to
deepen children’s relationship with the natural world through
sustained, inquiry-based outdoor learning experiences that
support resilience, independence, collaboration, creativity,
wellbeing, environmental stewardship and confident risk
assessment. We want our students to learn about the
environment, from the environment and for the environment.
And the best place to do that is in the environment.
This year, with support from the UWCSEA community, we
were able to train nine teachers and three teaching assistants,
extending the programme beyond K1 to include all K2
students as well.
This extended team has allowed us to add after school
programmes including Bugs Galore and Forest Play School.
We have also piloted the programme with one G1 class
and one G2 class this year, with plans to further roll out
to children in these grades in the school year ahead.
Additionally, we are developing a plan to further expand the
programme in the years ahead.
Community Allotment Garden Programme
The Community Allotment Garden was established in
October 2024 and has truly grown and flourished over the
last two years. High demand from community gardeners
resulted in the expansion from five to ten vegepods - enabling
more students, parents and staff to connect with nature,
grow plants, and share gardening tips with each other.
The Mandarin-speaking parent community enjoyed a
Grow-Your-Own-Herbs workshop led by Environmental
Sustainability Technician Soniya earlier this year. She has also
worked with students to harvest from our gardens and make
curry pastes, roselle jam, tarragon butter and chilli salts. The
students have been proud to be able to take these products
home to try with their families along with sweet potato,
spinach leaves and green papaya. Soniya’s creative ideas
such as using dried flowers and leaves to decorate upcycled
candles have also inspired many students to think outside the
box about how they can use the fruits (and vegetables!) of
their labour.
Danye is a Grade 4 and Grade 11 parent who has found
comfort in looking after her allotment garden after the
passing of her mother. “I’m really grateful for this opportunity
to continue my passion for planting within the UWCSEA
community”. She has found a quiet space to reflect and
connect to other gardeners, and has built a friendship through
sharing tips with fellow gardener Butter, a Grade 11 scholar
from Vietnam.
Butter has embraced her role as the student leader of the
‘Incredible Edibles’ Service group and took one Vegepod under
her care. Butter’s success growing pea shoots and radishes
has had a big impact on her: “Gardening is not only about
harvesting. It’s a chance for you to learn things from nature
and cherish the meaning of life.”
Dragonfly Ponds | Campus Biodiversity
Service Group Initiative
A new project this year is the forming of a Campus Biodiversity
group, which established three ponds to invite biodiversity
and activity. Through careful research and testing, they have
created the optimal conditions to encourage dragonflies and
their larvae, which prey on mosquito larvae. The pond has
also become a home to the three-lined frog. The students
are very proud of how quickly after setting up the ponds,
they became so full of life! They now conduct regular water
testing to measure dissolved oxygen, pH and temperature, and
otherwise monitor the success of this new effort.
SUSTAINABILITY AT EAST
Chicken Learning Classroom
Over time, the popularity of our campus chickens with Grade
K1 through to Grade 12 has created a higher demand for the
limited space that the coop occupies. We acknowledged a
need for a chicken classroom–an engagement space where a
whole class and teachers could enjoy spending time with the
chickens together.
To address this need, we involved Grade 11 students from our
Permaculture Design Solutions Environmental Initiative. A
group of six dedicated students spent all of Term 1 researching
and preparing a pitch to redesign a space in the gardens by
the bus bay area near the chicken coop, transforming it into
a chicken classroom. They learned about pollinator benches
and helped the Environmental Sustainability team redesign
the space as a chicken engagement outdoor classroom, with
gabion wall designs to ensure a natural feel. It is important
that this space remains natural and as wild as possible.
With eight large, modular pollinator benches and two swing
gates, the area will be transformed into a circular classroom
that seats 25-30 students at a time, allowing for the chickens
to be out of their coop and supervised for activities such
as sketching, observing, feeding, and overall chicken care
routines. Even without the chickens, this area will also serve
as a great place for art classes, read-a-louds, storytelling,
acting and games. With a natural look and feel, these gabion
pollinator benches will fit in seamlessly, providing a natural
classroom with various functions and purposes.
Food Forest Perimeter
The food forest began eight years ago on East Campus. A
modest project to rewild a small stretch of the ornamental
gardens of the perimeter ring road, has since grown into a
beautifully productive food forest used by multiple grades
for various purposes. Rewilding means stepping back
and letting nature take care of itself. Instead of humans
constantly managing, planting, or weeding a piece of land,
we fix the initial damage like removing dams or reintroducing
native animals, and then let natural processes take over. The
ultimate goal is to create a wild, diverse ecosystem that takes
care of itself without human help. With generous gifts from
donors, we have been able to expand the food forest along all
of Tampines Avenue 5, a distance of 750m.
This year, Grade 9 and Grade 5 students added a variety
of new plants to diversify our food forest. These included
mangosteen, coffee, neem, cashew, and rambutan. We also
hosted exciting community events in the plaza focused
on the bounty of the East Campus food forest, celebrating
and sharing harvests of banana, jackfruit, cocoa, calamansi,
pandan, mint, mangos, starfruit, guava, lemongrass,
mulberries, basil, chilies, ginger, turmeric, papaya.
The Live Lighter Collective and Student-led Workshops
The Live Lighter Collective, located in the UWCSEA East Service Office, continues to gain momentum and traction as a place
for all community members to come together, share resources and inspiration and check out the amazing wares of our
Environmental Initiatives service groups. Our used uniform section is a big highlight at the start and end of terms, as families
look for a ‘lighter’ approach to replacing school uniforms. Students and families can find books to borrow about permaculture
and living life a little bit lighter.
Natural soaps, upcycled candles, essential oils, dehydrated fruits, natural deodorants, seeds, and beeswax wraps are also all on
offer. This year, student-led workshops for the creation and function of the aforementioned items were hosted by students, for
students. This was a wonderful celebration of the skills they’ve gained throughout their time in their Environmental Initiatives,
as well as celebration of the wonderful ways we can all consume less, waste less and live lighter on the planet, in our learning
journey at the college.
My interest in sustainability was not
sparked by a single ‘aha’ moment. Rather,
it was something that gradually deepened
throughout my years at UWCSEA.
Growing up, I encountered the idea of
being a changemaker and global citizen
regularly in school. But it wasn’t until
Grade 5 that these ideas began to feel real.
UWCSEA’s commitment to experiential
learning showed me that sustainability was
not a distant global issue discussed only
by scientists, politicians, or activists. It was
something all of us had a responsibility to
engage with.
— Videep, Grade 11 (Student since
Grade 2)
FUND-2526
Thank you for making a difference in 2025/2026
For more information about UWCSEA’s Environmental Sustainability Programme, or to renew your support today,
please contact: UWCSEA Foundation | +65 6419 9353 | foundation@uwcsea.edu.sg | www.uwcesa.edu.sg/supportus
ON THE HORIZON
Sustainability at Dover Campus
Under the leadership of Zoe Perry, our community gardening
plans for next year include upskilling our gardeners on how
to grow more epiphytes and orchids as we prepare for more
vertical gardens at the new Dover Campus at Tengah. We
plan to upcycle clay waste from the art department to
make self-watering orchid holders. We also want to expand
on the harvestable garden produce from campus and use
more student-harvested products in our food technology
lessons featuring our herb hydroponics set, dehydrator and
ice cream maker. We hope to be able to offer homemade
gelatos using fruits and herbs from our garden at the next
Community Fair! With over 25 after-school sustainability clubs
growing, composting and recycling, our students and broader
community are eager to continue to have a positive impact on
our campus!
We will also continue to expand the Forest School programme,
adding new grades of children and improving our spaces and
curriculum. Furthermore, we will continue to engage students
in a variety of sustainability-related initiatives in the areas of
biodiversity conservation, biomimicry, and composting, and
continue to grow our partnerships with NParks and other
mission-aligned organisations. Finally, we will continue to
imagine what sustainability learning will look and feel like at
our new Dover Campus at Tengah, including incorporating
sustainability as our core built environment principle, focusing
on greening the new campus, and imagining partnerships with
the neighbouring three-hectare park in our new space.
Your support does far more than fund individual
projects; it transforms both our campuses into living
laboratories where students of all ages learn to care
for the Earth, reduce waste, and protect our resources.
Thank you for partnering with us to cultivate the next
generation of hands-on, conscious changemakers.
Environmental Sustainability at East Campus
Looking ahead to the 2026/2027 academic year, East Campus
will deepen student engagement by further developing our
campus as an interactive, outdoor living laboratory. Central
to this vision is continually upgrading and enhancing our 11
Outdoor Classroom spaces into rich, nature-infused learning
environments for students across all grades. A key highlight
will be developing a dedicated workshop and practical
makerspace within The Nest, our 6th-floor rooftop garden.
This upgraded space will allow more classes to participate
in hands-on sustainability projects—such as crafting natural
soap and deodorant, cultivating mushrooms, and preparing
harvested produce for school events and community
celebrations, like Live Lighter and Family Festival.
In 2026/2027 we will also elevate the Zero Waste Centre
(ZWC) into a dynamic hub for investigating campus waste
streams, consumption habits, and resource conservation.
Through our annual donation drives, the ZWC processes
thousands of items and needs constant maintenance and
oversight. Students are continually giving new life to ‘waste’
through student-led upcycling projects while gaining firsthand
insight into daily consumption volumes of our campus.
In the year ahead, our Sustainability leaders Aloni Cahusac and
Jacyl Ware will embrace opportunities to share the success,
wonder, and methodology of UWCSEA East’s outdoor learning
spaces on regional and global platforms, including participation
in international conferences dedicated to professional teacher
development and sustainability education.